EuroWire July 2015

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Transatlantic cable
July 2015 28
by-product of a big quake: widespread power failures. Many
cellphone towers have a battery supply that may last as
little as four hours. A US Geological Survey report warned
that power could be cut o for weeks should a magnitude
7.8 earthquake strike the San Andreas fault, which lies about
35 miles from Los Angeles. This could render swaths of the
cellphone network useless.
Energy
Growing global demand for air
conditioning will require extensive
investment in electricity grids
“In the United States, which uses more air conditioning than the
rest of the world combined, most of the grid is sized to meet the
few days a year when coolers are cranking at full blast under
sweltering temperatures.”
In IEEE Spectrum, published by the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers, science writer Katherine Tweed went on
to note that this has meant a grid that runs ine ciently most of
the year. To help remedy this, some technologies for regulating
demand – eg remote control of air conditioner compressors –
have come into use in recent years.
Such expedients must become standard procedure as air
conditioning is more widely adopted around the globe. In China,
sales of air conditioning units have nearly doubled in over the
past ve years, with more than 60 million units sold in 2013
alone.
According to new research from the University of California
at Berkeley, reviewed by Ms Tweed, that trend will contribute
heavily to greatly increased energy use in developing and
middle-income countries even as it attens somewhat in the US
and Europe. (“Electricity Use Could Soar as Global Middle Class
Embraces Air Conditioning,” 4th May)
Using data from Mexico, researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas
School of Business studied air conditioning in relation to climate
and income.
Taking into account the likely rise in both household incomes
and air temperatures, they project that air-conditioned interiors
worldwide will rise from 13 per cent of residences today to more
than 70 per cent by the end of the century.
This is “mostly good news,” said Professor Lucas Davis, lead
author of the Haas School report: “Air conditioning will bring
relief to the more than three billion people who live in the
tropics and subtropics.”
But the growing prevalence of air conditioning will require
intensive investment in electricity generation in places such as
India and southeast Asia, where even meeting today’s needs is
a strain.
India’s demand for cooling is 12 times what it is in the USA,
according to the Berkeley team; and Indonesia, Thailand and the
Philippines experience more “cooling degree days” than India.
Within just a few decades, the Haas School model shows “near
universal saturation” in air conditioning use.
† Powering all those air conditioners will call for grids
capable of generating adequate electricity. The UC Berkeley
research strongly suggests that the time has come for
decision-making about energy costs and technologies.
Dr Davis advocates an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach that
includes aggressive funding for innovation, e cient pricing
of energy, and evidence-based environmental policies.
He said: “We need e cient markets if we are going to stay cool
without heating up the planet.”
That is the challenge for a warming world.
Slow to kindle to o shore windmills,
Americans seem willing at last to put
some ‘steel on the water’
More than 2,300 wind turbines twirl o the coasts of 11
European countries today, and the United Kingdom has just
awarded approval for the world’s largest o shore wind farm.
When completed, the Dogger Bank Creyke Beck project o
the coast of Yorkshire will have installed 400 turbines across
430 square miles and be more than double the size of the
current biggest o shore windfarm in the UK.
Bobby Magill, a senior science writer at Climate Central
(Princeton, New Jersey), invoked the embrace of wind energy
in Europe to point up the contrast with the US attitude toward
this source of renewable energy.
While Americans debate the viability of wind farms o their
coasts, Europeans have been in the o shore wind development
business for decades.
Climate Central is an independent organisation of scientists
and journalists researching and reporting on climate change
and its impact on the American public.
Drawing on its work, Mr Magill believes that Americans may
now be ready to shake o their tentativeness and follow the
European lead on o shore wind energy.
In Climate Central’s journal of the same name, he reviewed a
wind farm set to “break ground” in July o the coast of Rhode
Island. With it, he said, o shore wind energy seems suddenly
to have a future in America. (“‘Steel on the Water’ Critical for
O shore Wind in US,” 11th May)
Mr Magill wrote: “If completed, the Block Island Wind Farm will
be the rst o shore wind farm in the USA. If it is successful,
it could prove that wind power generated by turbines o the
coast is a viable enterprise similar to onshore wind farms, which
generate about four per cent of America’s electricity.”
That could, he said, set the stage for other o shore wind projects
all along the East Coast as Washington opens up more waters to
wind farm development.
President Barack Obama’s Climate Action Plan includes o shore
wind in the administration’s push to generate 20,000 megawatts
(MW) of renewable power on federally controlled public lands
and waters by 2020.
This makes wind a major element in Mr Obama’s declared
intention to counter climate change with low-carbon energy.
† The 30MW, ve-turbine Block Island Wind Farm, which
will sell its electricity to the utility National Grid, will be
signi cant for the USA out of proportion to its size. “I think
the Block Island project is a signi cant milestone for o shore